I pulled into a parking lot of a building that appeared abandoned. The building had the unmistakable architecture of a drive-in hamburger\/malt joint from the American Graffiti era. I could almost see the girls rollerskating up to take an order and hear the Coasters blasting through tin speakers. <\/p>\n
But now this was OTA country, hours 10 am to 2:30 am. <\/p>\n
I walked inside and investigated. My knees nearly buckled in the course of my investigation. I beheld a 400-pound OTA woman taking on all comers at pool and loudly kicking ass. The bathrooms had hatchets for door handles. I saw two OTA men with walkers, another on a motorized wheelchair, another with a cane, and another with a hook where his left hand should have been. There were at least 500 pool trophies decorating ponderosa pine walls, easily the most I’d ever seen in an OTA joint. <\/p>\n
And there was something else, oh yes, definitely something else, shining brightly near the restrooms: a twinkling red and white vending machine named Sex Stop, that sold sex toys, condoms and kink DVDs. I’d never seen anything like it in OTA country and it staggered my imagination to think a regular ever wasted perfectly good beer and keno money and purchased a product. <\/p>\n
I went up to the bar to order from the diminutive female OTA bartender and felt a jolt. No liquor served! A real Oregon tavern! They haven’t gone extinct yet. The joint also didn’t have a single micro beer available and for that absence, I did a little stealth jig for joy. <\/p>\n
After receiving my beer, a corporate ale, I retreated to a a high table in a corner that afforded the best place to eavesdrop. Thus, I eavesdropped.<\/p>\n
Profane, staccato bursts from the pool shark, a story about a bald eagle scavenging roadkill, a crusty reminiscence from an old timer’s gold mining days. <\/p>\n
I sipped the ale and wrote, my notebook paper illuminated only by the lights of Sex Stop. <\/p>\n\n
I pulled into a parking lot of a building that appeared abandoned. The building had the unmistakable architecture of a drive-in hamburger\/malt joint from the American Graffiti era. I could almost see the girls rollerskating up to take an order and hear the Coasters blasting through tin speakers. But now this was OTA country, hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[101,21,27,23],"class_list":["post-4536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-tavern-age","tag-dive-bars","tag-oregon-tavern-age","tag-ota","tag-taverns","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4538,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions\/4538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}